


Haze

by paxnirvana



Category: Sentou Yousei Yukikaze (Battle Fairy Yukikaze)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxnirvana/pseuds/paxnirvana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of shorts. Vaguely connected. May spoil for any of the Operations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haze

There was the distinctive stuffy-cool air of the 'outdoors' of the underground city around him. There was the almost-pleasant buzzing in his head. There was the lingering sharpness of champagne on his tongue. Rei walked along the ramp to the tram station, eyes half-lidded, dimly aware of the familiar warmth beside him, around his shoulders, bolstering him. Odd that, when most flavors passed him by, this one would linger. Perhaps it was the occasion.

 

Jack had wanted to celebrate. With a bottle of champagne in his office. He'd broken the light over his desk opening it, too, as Rei watched those tanned, strong hands work the stubborn cork free with a kind of lightness in his belly, as if an unwelcome weight had been removed. He'd been cleared, finally, by the inquest. His grounding had been rescinded and he could log flight time again.

 

But he didn't feel any elation yet, just a sense of relief. The B-503 was still in the repair bay; they'd found a hairline crack in a missile mount and, for safety's sake, were replacing the whole assembly. Not just for the flight crew's safety, he knew, but for the safety of the Super Sylph itself – the most sophisticated and expensive surveillance and intelligence gathering airplane ever built by mankind. Housing the most advanced A.I. pilot-assistance program ever designed. No matter that if felt like an extension of his own body when he had his hands on the controls. No matter that he had felt the damage deep in his own gut as shrapnel from the exploding JAM ship had torn through the composite skin and into delicate systems. It was his plane. His freedom. And he wanted it back. His plane… only his… the name on the nose proved it… He sucked in a sharp breath, reality stealing through his mind like a cold wind for a moment. No, it wasn't his. Something that expensive, that complicated, that demanding could never truly belong to him… yet…

 

Yukikaze. The name written in bold, sloppy kanji on the nose just for him. So fitting…

 

He ached again, just a little. There was an odd flutter in his mind, like the tentative movement of wings, or the uncurling of a leaf. He tipped his head back, letting his bangs slide away from his eyes, aware, faintly, that there was a smile on his face as he leaned back against a firm, secure presence.

 

A strong arm slid around his waist. Warm breath washed across his ear, his jaw. The smile didn't fade from his face even as he let his eyes slip closed.

 

"Guess I let you drink a little too much, huh?" The words were said in a deep, husky voice, vibrating faintly against his skin like the control stick did under his hands in flight. Heady. Intoxicating.

 

He sagged back. Letting go. Trusting the control system… trusting…

 

"C'mon, Rei, let's get you home."

\--fin--


	2. Abandoned

He lay on the bed, heart pounding, body sweating. She had left him alone again, after murmuring soft words and gentle reassurances that left him strangely unsoothed. He was glad she was gone even though the silence gnawed at him, unbroken save for his own labored breath. Her eyes bothered him. So sad… so knowing.

 

The room they had given him was bare. Stark. Furnished with only the bed he lay on and a straight-backed chair. It was lit oddly, too. Indirectly. But he barely noticed, too ill to keep his eyes open for long. It was almost as hard to keep his eyes open as it had been to walk away from Yukikaze there in the flatlands… But they had been pursued from the moment the mission began… harassed by the gray Sylph until fuel was dangerously low and Yukikaze was flashing a warning light at him… to land, miles away from safety… _caution… You have control, Lt. Fukai… caution… caution…_

 

He lifted his head. Moaned and gulped back bile as even that little motion made his stomach pitch as it never did even during the most extreme-g maneuvers in the air. He shivered, drained, weary and exhausted.

 

The nausea wasn't the worst of it, however. Or the fever, the aches. It was the low-level grinding sense of unease that filled his gut, made his hands tremble and his eyes slide closed again to shut out the barren room around him.

 

 _"Your base told us to take care of you."_

 

The man's cool voice still echoed in his head. Tormenting him. He burrowed his face further into the scratchy pillow, arms sliding up to wrap around his head as if he could block the voice out, the message. Deny he had ever heard it.

 

They had argued, before, not been speaking… he had rebuffed Jack's attempts to see him after hours… but…

 

Abandoned.

 

Jack had abandoned him. Here on this strange base… sick and lost and alone, except for the oddly maternal nurse who wiped his face tenderly each time he spewed back up the thin, tasteless gruel they tried to feed him. Even plain water was a challenge, due to the sickness ravaging him.

 

But it was nothing compared to the anguish, the agony tearing him apart from the inside to have heard those cold, cold words from a stranger's mouth.

 

Abandoned. Jack hadn't sent a personal message. No word. There had been no demands to see him, to speak with him, to have him transported back to Fairy Command immediately for treatment in the main medical facility there. Nothing.

 

It was his fault. He'd snubbed Jack's last overture of friendliness at the pre-mission briefing. Standing so rigidly behind Lt. Burgadish and falling back on the safe routine of a junior officer's obligation of respect for a senior. Saluting Jack without letting his eyes shift away from the framed certificates on the wall beyond Jack's shoulder. Avoiding the probing gaze even as he absorbed the flicker of pain that rippled across Jack's face.

 

He cried out now against his own foolishness, shuddering, head buried completely in the pillow, hands shaking as he clenched them in his own fever-damp hair.

 

"Don't leave me," he called. Desperately, brokenly. "Please… don't leave me…"

 

He heard the brisk sound of feet approaching in the hall outside. Lifted his head a little, eye peering over the bunched pillow from beneath jumbled hair, hope rising against all reason as he stared at the door. Was it…? Could it be…?

 

The door swung open to reveal the nurse, Marnie, again, carrying a tray with a bowl and glass on it, her gaze meeting his. Infinitely sad. He let his eyes close.

 

Abandoned… _Jack…_

 

He let the dark swirl of fever take him down again.

 

\- - fin - -


	3. Incomplete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edith Foss and problems that defy solutions.

She lay in her bed that night with the reading light on. It wouldn't matter, she knew, if it was in darkness or light, but the little girl who had once been afraid of the dark appeared to be strong tonight. If they came and took her, she likely wouldn't even know. But the visceral terror remained. Of the unknown, the unknowable, the unseen...

The alien.

The JAM were copying humans. They had already infiltrated two forward bases... the Banshee IV... now even the Special Weapons Unit...

Captain Edith Foss shuddered and huddled deeper under her blankets, somehow resisting the urge to pull them over her head, staring blindly at the spines of the glossy fashion magazines piled high on her nightstand. She wouldn't cower now. Earlier, she had stood outside on the surface of Fairy with Major Bukhar in the rain and watched him watch Lieutenant Fukai through the closed canopy of Yukikaze's cockpit for nearly ten minutes. Watched him stare at the bent head. Measure the studied stillness. Absorb Fukai's complete lack of response to requests by ground crew to leave the plane.

Somehow, Bukhar understood Fukai well enough to just wait. Not that Yukikaze was willing to release Fukai yet either. The cockpit did not shift back into access mode so that the canopy could be opened.

Plane and pilot presenting a unified front. 'Us' against... everyone else.

She'd felt both the concern mixed with relief and the angry sense of frustrated helplessness and pain that radiated from Bukhar until she convinced him to go to the infirmary and get his hand tended. Fukai might drive her to near screaming distraction, but at least she wasn't the one in love with the moody bastard, she had thought darkly. Bukhar was a decent sort too. Intelligent. Handsome. Still young. He was the kind of commanding officer the men adored - personable, caring, interested. One they knew was more than willing to go to the line for any of them. But most especially for Fukai...

The sound of breaking glass still rang in her ears. The slow drip of blood from Booker's hand onto the console. His frantic cries over the radio... Fukai's name, over and over, as they both watched the tracking display count down the distance...

She'd felt a pang of sympathy for Bukhar, out there on the tarmac, even as she tried to gauge Fukai's state of mind, his stability. As base shrink, it was her job. She had to be there when he returned. Despite the fact that she was scared out of her mind, suddenly, to be working so intimately with one of the human beings the JAM seemed to have taken special interest in.

She could have stayed, surrounded by the illusory safety of humans in numbers, inside the base and summoned Fukai to her office. But she'd been drawn down to the field by Bukhar's urgency and out onto the taxiway by her own curiosity to meet Yukikaze as it carried it's oddly silent pilot back to base. Aware that Yukikaze, from the telemetry profiles, felt no threat from Fukai, but still the frightened girl buried deep inside of her had whispered that even the seemingly infallible Yukikaze might be tricked and Fukai could be...

She just closed her eyes tighter and tried to regulate her slowly accelerating breaths, her stuttering pulse. No. These were childish fears that reason should be able to dispel, she told herself sternly. Fukai was human. Introverted, moody, unresponsive, repressed, asocial; wildly unusual traits for a fighter pilot - but it was those very characteristics that appeared to make him so deeply compatible with the AI system. She had watched the AI's telemetry closely all during their return to base. The graphs and profiles showed it vividly; Yukikaze performed at peak when in Fukai's presence. Adhered faultlessly to mission and even volunteered information on the JAM. But for no one else would the system do this. Without Fukai, Yukikaze was... incomplete.

She bolted upright in bed, shock lancing through her as certain, formerly puzzling, graph trends suddenly made sense to her. She grabbed her robe, jumped out of bed, then stood uselessly in the middle of her room, trembling.

The patterns _showed_ it. It was as if Yukikaze needed Fukai... Cared about him.

Loved him.

She laughed at her own fancy, the sound startling in the silence of her room even though she was the one to make it. It sounded nearly hysterical. She rubbed her eyes with the base of her palms as she sagged back down to sit on her bed, making sure to stay well within the pool of light.

Suddenly her heart ached for Bukhar.

And for them all.

\- - end - -


	4. Drenched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edith Foss bears witness.

~*~*~*~*~

She stared at him blindly, her heart pounding slow and thick in her chest, her body trembling and faintly unsteady with the aftermath of fear that had no outlet. She'd only had to witness it all -- to listen helplessly -- as horror unfolded somewhere in the skies of Fairy. Her mind still whirled fearfully with the almost unbelievable truth. The JAM… Captain John… the Banshee IV… Fukai's desperate shout…

She blinked once. Took an unsteady breath and tried to break her mind away from the fear.

His hand was drenched in blood. She should do something about that, she realized.

But for the moment, she could only sit and stare. Watching him as he sat so still, a brooding, anguished presence beside her. James Bukhar. So human… so desperate…

She'd had telemetry. Her uplink data. She'd known that Yukikaze, at least, had survived. Escaped the destruction of Banshee IV with uncanny luck. Given what she knew of the AI that governed the plane, she was certain Fukai had survived as well.

But Bukhar hadn't believed it until he finally heard an answer to his cries over the radio.

Fukai.

So soft. Barely heard. "I'm here... Jack."

"Rei! Thank God you're okay."

The relief in Jack's voice had been almost painful to hear. She'd flinched from the rawness of it, the exposed emotion. It had made her feel like a voyeur, sitting frozen in her seat beside him, her gaze fixed helplessly on Bukhar's drawn, nearly haggard, profile as he spoke.

"Jack…" Fukai said, something living and desperate and raw in his own voice. She'd never heard Fukai sound like that before. Bukhar shuddered in response, his hand fisting tighter on the microphone, fresh blood welling again through the drying, as a soft sound that might have been pain came from him.

"…I know, Rei. Just come home."

He hadn't even noticed her watching him, listening to them. He didn't care who knew, who saw, who heard, oblivious in his relief and need to comfort Fukai. She had watched his eyes slide closed, his head bow toward the microphone as he let out a long, heavy sigh. Blood still dripped unheeded from his wounded hand.

"Return to Base, B-3," he said gruffly, seeming to remember protocol and duty at last. "I'll see you on the field."

The hesitation was long before the soft "Acknowledged," came back over the radio. Then the connection had been switched off.

Despite all her study of human psychology, of human reaction and emotion and behavior, she'd never quite believed in love. Sexual desire. Affection. Mutual need. Dependency. Greed. Infatuation. Duty. Compassion. Protectiveness. Camaraderie. Those things she could measure and analyze and even predict, to an extent. She had even experienced most of them herself, in one form or another at one time or another in her life. But not true love.

She'd begun to wonder if that kind of love was even real. If humans could truly be that selfless, that pure, that concerned for another's need outside of fiction or fairy tales. Both schooling and life had taught her that it was unlikely, that selfishness and desire and pettiness drove most human interaction. And her time in the FAF had only deepened her disillusionment.

She'd never quite believed before that a human being could truly love another.

Now she did.

That kind of love was the frantic fear she had seen in Bukhar's every move, every desperate order, every urgent reaction while Fukai was out of contact.

That love was the sense of helpless, furious betrayal that drove him to put his fist through the window when Bukhar discovered the crucial piece of information about Captain John that the General had always known even as she ordered Fukai to take him on this mission.

Real love meant that Bukhar would do or say or risk anything if it would keep the one he loved alive and whole...

And now it was the shaking, trembling wave of relief that bent Bukhar's strong frame over his own bloodied hand after finally hearing his lover's voice again.

But she had seen it for herself now.

Real love was terrifying.

Edith Foss pushed her chair back slowly, the creak of it beyond Bukhar's attention, so lost was he in his inward thoughts. She went to the back of the room. Opened the cabinets there one at a time, searching until she found the first aid kit that every room was equipped with by regulation.

Then she moved to his side. Crouched down beside him as she set the kit on the desk. Prepared what she would need to make him fit enough to greet his lover. She drew a flicker of reaction from him at last when she pulled the microphone from his now slack grip. He noticed the gauze in her hand - and the blood everywhere - for the first time, it seemed. He frowned slightly, his gaze dark, anguished. But not from physical pain...

"Let me take care of that for you," she said quietly, dropping her own gaze away.

She didn't think she wanted to see any more.

\- - end - -


	5. Exit Down Stage

~*~*~

 

He sat on the edge of his bed, already fully dressed, and looked down at the sleeping face of the man he'd brought there. With a sigh, Jack lifted a hand and brushed dark bangs away from closed eyes. So soft, Rei's hair. Like a child's hair. He brushed it back again, fingers lingering in the tumbled strands as they fell stubbornly back into place. The bangs were far too long; they were always falling in Rei'is face, in his eyes. A barrier. A shield.

Jack let his fingertips trail slowly across the thin wing of one brow and watched the eyelids below flutter once, then open. He smiled as he looked into sleep-blurred gray eyes. Felt a small sting of pain when there was no smile in return. He let his own smile fade even as his hand slipped down the other's face, tracing across a pale, high cheekbone and along the angle of jaw to the stubborn jut of chin, thumb rubbing there in a soft caress. Rei licked his lips once but stayed silent. Watching him.

Jack sighed again, fingers falling away. The bruises and cuts along the other side of that face – and the heavy bandages on the arm below reminded him once more how close he had come to losing Rei. His heart lurched in his chest, clogging his throat.

"I'm going in to C and C now, Rei." His voice sounded too tight, even to his own ears. He tried to will his throat to relax. "Sure you'll be okay on your own with that?" He jerked his chin a fraction toward the bandaged arm.

"Yes, Jack," Rei said, his voice as soft and uninflected as always.

Jack stared down at his own hand where it now lay on the tumbled blankets covering Rei. Knew he was due in Command and Control within the hour but couldn't make himself get up to leave just yet.

"I feel better that you came home with me last night." He looked up suddenly into Rei's eyes. Hoping to surprise something there? If so, he'd failed. They were still cool and reserved. So distant… "Rei…" He leaned down then, lips capturing Rei's in a quick, urgent kiss. But before he could lose himself in it – and push Rei too far too fast, particularly with that injury – he pulled away, forcing himself to his feet.

He made himself walk all the way to the door before he dared look back at the bed.

Rei was still watching him. Face composed. Gaze steady. Jack swallowed hard, throat going painfully tight for an instant, then keyed the door open and forced himself to walk outside. And away.

He didn't say goodbye. He never said goodbye to Rei. He couldn't.

But as he forced himself to keep walking down the hall and further away from Rei, he suddenly realized that he'd seen Rei's other hand lying on top of the blankets drawn up to his chest. The hand not in bandages.

As if it had just dropped there, unnoticed, when Jack pulled away.

\--end--


	6. Spinning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Operation 5 - spoilers.

~*~*~

And the screens are a blur of incoming traces, so thick they blind him to the shape he is guarding, leading, guiding beyond; that awkward shape stolen from an animal that would never know the impossible skies of this world, a creature of distant seas. And Yukikaze is whispering in his ears and singing of decay to him and the three remote planes are spinning like leaves around them, but shifting like boomerangs, returning, protecting, shielding.

The only human voice he can hear rings in his ears, calling to him. Cracking open. Spilling out the agony of a inconsolable heart. Telling him not to return. Begging him.

And he knows why even as that part of his heart breaks too and falls away toward a blue-green planet that should never have been touched by this world of waste and deception and desperation and Yukikaze's song rises dangerously in pitch and the three remotes blur away and back and away again, part of her, of him and yet not. Just shields that they are, yet each facets of the whole gestalt of ship and man that cannot fail.

Still he knows he'd break off his own hand to save that shape behind him. Detonate the remote ships. Dump Yukikaze's core and wipe her, him, humanity all clean.

If doing so could preserve what that clumsy ship holds.

"Come with me, Jack," he had whispered in the darkness of that room that was never theirs, only his even as he'd known the impossibility of his request. Warmth behind him, but never in front of him again. Painful silence his reply. Perhaps a slight sidestep of reality would have painted a different picture -- of blue skies and golden warmth and honest sunlight and clear air – but it was gone in the moments split apart, a single moment without contact. No flesh to flesh, no breath of his own; but then he no longer needs it. While in front of him he feels now only the bright-sharp-flash high electronic whine of systems engaging, shifting over, straining in this alien realm; his grip tight on controls that pay his shaking hands no heed.

He must save that warmth, that memory of was. Yukikaze's song rises toward crescendo, the answering scream of their enemies beyond deafening.

He will save it.

The black swarm follows them. Hungry. Desperate. Seeing their strategy too late now in these final nano-seconds as Yukikaze's black-red-black and white-kanji nose pierces the walls of the passageway, forcing the path of destruction that he knows the other ship, the sum of his hopes, the breath from his lungs, must ride.

No boomerang this time, Yukikaze shrieks up the length of the towering cloud, death and all its minions howling in her wake. The shields stay behind, leaving them bare, but holding the gateway open those few precious seconds longer.

Long enough. He hopes. She promises.

For love to escape.

-end-


End file.
